The Recent CUNY School of Law Grad Won the Prestigious Aryeh Neier Fellowship to Continue Her Human Rights Work
Naveed’s Advocacy Was Celebrated on the Floor of the U.S. Senate, Where Sen. Durbin Called Her an ‘Immigrant Healthcare Hero’
Even as she cared for COVID-19 patients as a volunteer with the NYC Medical Reserve Corps at the height of the pandemic, Hina Naveed spent her nights studying law at the CUNY School of Law. A registered nurse, Naveed earned her Juris Doctorate on Jan. 14, her third degree from CUNY.
Her flair for multitasking came through loud and clear in a letter Naveed wrote to U.S. Senator Dick Durbin, in which she stressed the vital importance of creating a pathway to citizenship for herself and thousands of other fellow Dreamers. Sen. Durbin, who introduced the DREAM Act in 2001 and continues to push for Congressional passage of comprehensive immigration reform, recently read Naveed’s letter on the Senate floor and celebrated her achievements, calling her an “immigrant healthcare hero.”
Sen. Durbin highlighted Naveed’s community-based work on behalf of children in foster care, her volunteer work caring for COVID patients and the perseverance and tenacity of a woman who came to the U.S. at the age of 10 from Pakistan by way of Dubai.
Poignant though they were, the senator’s words merely scratched the surface of Naveed’s work as a social justice warrior, immigrant rights advocate, healthcare professional and now, as a law graduate.
For her relentless commitment to expanding rights for immigrants and Dreamers; the around-the-clock care she provided as a nurse during the pandemic; and her goal to one day influence policy to benefit underserved communities, Naveed has been selected as a CUNY Hero, a distinction bestowed on members of the CUNY community who stand out for acts of generosity, bravery and service. Naveed, whose family moved to the U.S. so her sister could attain life-saving medical care, has demonstrated each of those qualities.
“Hina is a role model in every sense, from her advocacy on behalf of her fellow Dreamers to her commitment to equal rights, to advancing the city’s recovery,” said CUNY Chancellor Félix V. Matos Rodríguez. “Her commitment to defending human rights as a lawyer, and to combating the pandemic’s effects through her work as a nurse, is inspiring. CUNY welcomes and supports Dreamers like Hina, who enrich our campuses and classrooms with their idealism, compassion and singular determination to make the world better and more just. We are proud to have served as a launching pad for Hina and eagerly look forward to all the great work that’s to come.”
Two weeks before she sat for the bar exam on Feb. 23, Naveed learned that she had won the prestigious Aryeh Neier Fellowship, a research and mentorship program that will allow her to work year-long stints at Human Rights Watch and the ACLU, beginning this summer. Naveed has also volunteered as the campaign manager for her longtime friend Cesar Vargas, a CUNY Law grad who is mounting a Democratic primary run in the race for Staten Island borough president. Vargas made history in 2015, when he became the state’s first undocumented immigrant to be admitted to the state bar.
Naveed’s nursing career, extensive advocacy work and legal studies have often overlapped. After witnessing firsthand how the pandemic exacerbated long-standing health disparities among low-income communities, she looks forward to the day when she will have a hand in making policy that supports the equitable distribution of services. But first, she hopes to find a permanent solution to her immigration status.
“Because of DACA I was able to go to college and become a registered nurse,” she said. “But it’s not permanent and I have to live my life in two-year intervals, wondering what’s going to happen next. When Senator Durbin was sharing my story, it was important, because I hope that is what pushes people that have claimed to support essential workers and hard-working immigrants and called us heroes to put us on a path to citizenship for good.”
Doing her Part During the Pandemic
As she pursued her studies at CUNY Law, Naveed served as director of health services at Seamen’s Society for Children and Families, ensuring that foster kids received medical services. She stepped down in January to focus on the bar exam. Naveed also volunteered on weekends during the pandemic, traveling to the Brooklyn Hospital Center and ArchCare at Carmel Richmond Healthcare and Rehabilitation Center in Staten Island to care for COVID patients. She recently renewed her nurse’s license and signed up to administer COVID-19 vaccinations.
“I’m Muslim, so my religion teaches me that if you have a skill and you can be beneficial to your community, you have to use it,” said Naveed of her seven-day (and night) workweeks throughout the pandemic. “There’s no way I could sit on the sidelines, knowing there’s a nursing shortage and I have the license that will allow me to do something about it. I had to help.”
Finding her Activist Voice
Combining advocacy, studies and work is nothing new to Naveed. While she attended nursing school at the College of Staten Island (CSI) from 2014 to 2017, she worked as a community organizer for the NYC Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs. Before that, she and Vargas co-founded the Staten Island Dream Coalition to lobby and advocate for Dreamers. That was around the time when she began speaking about her own immigration status.
Naveed and her family moved to the United States in 2001 to find care for her older sister, who was diagnosed with arteriovenous malformation, a complication that inhibits normal blood flow and oxygen circulation. When they found treatment at Boston Children’s Hospital, her family settled in Massachusetts.
The experience inspired Naveed, who was 11 at the time, to work in healthcare, determined to make others feel as her sister had been made to feel. After graduating from Diman Regional Vocational Technical High School as a certified nursing assistant in 2008, she moved to New York and earned her associate and bachelor’s degrees from CSI. Before she was a nursing student at CSI, Naveed came to know Vargas through their shared interest in immigrants’ rights.
Vargas eventually impressed upon her the value of attaining the legal training she would need to broaden her advocacy work. She was drawn to CUNY Law because of its reputation as a top-notch public interest law school that caters to students from groups that have been historically marginalized. The affordability of CUNY Law was also a factor, she said, because she was undocumented and didn’t qualify for federal grants or loans.
As someone who faced constant challenges because of her undocumented status — Naveed says an attorney misfiled her family’s paperwork while her sister was receiving care early on, causing her family to overstay their visas — Naveed is committed to making a difference as a champion of immigrant and human rights.
“I know I want to be in the space where I can reform policies so that marginalized communities receive the rights and services that they deserve,” said Naveed. “I want to do really good, sound policy work and make real, permanent, long-lasting change so that systems are in place to really help people.”
CUNY Heroes are members of the community who display a strong commitment tcommunity service. They have included Nekhidia Harris, a master’s degree student at York College, and Queensborough Community College graduate Shaneen Festus.Others showed themselves to be CUNY pandemic heroes last spring when they stepped up to assist their fellow New Yorkers as nurses, medics, members of the National Guard and good Samaritans.
The City University of New York is the nation’s largest urban public university, a transformative engine of social mobility that is a critical component of the lifeblood of New York City. Founded in 1847 as the nation’s first free public institution of higher education, CUNY today has seven community colleges, 11 senior colleges and seven graduate or professional institutions spread across New York City’s five boroughs, serving 500,000 students of all ages and awarding 55,000 degrees each year. CUNY’s mix of quality and affordability propels almost six times as many low-income students into the middle class and beyond as all the Ivy League colleges combined. More than 80 percent of the University’s graduates stay in New York, contributing to all aspects of the city’s economic, civic and cultural life and diversifying the city’s workforce in every sector. CUNY’s graduates and faculty have received many prestigious honors, including 13 Nobel Prizes and 26 MacArthur “Genius” Grants. The University’s historic mission continues to this day: provide a first-rate public education to all students, regardless of means or background.
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